


medicine

by howyoubrewing



Series: commander and captain [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ahsoka Tano Needs a Hug, Ahsoka Tano-centric, CT-7567 | Rex Needs a Hug, Captivity, Implied/Referenced Torture, Torture, Whumptober 2020, the jedi are war criminals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27158476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howyoubrewing/pseuds/howyoubrewing
Summary: "Oh, isn’t an interrogation,” he hums. “We’ve been tasked with researching the biology of Jedi, you see, and beings with Force powers. To recreate them, possibly, or just understand them.”Ahsoka and Rex are captured, and the Separatists have some terrible things in mind.[My shot at writing a Whumptober story]
Series: commander and captain [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931347
Comments: 5
Kudos: 75





	medicine

Ahsoka pulls herself out of unconscious oblivion with absolutely no recollection of where she is or why her head hurts so badly. And why is it so dark? Even as she forces her eyes open, the answers don’t come. Republic ships are never this dark, and she isn’t on a medbay bed. She’s on the ground—freezing, rock hard cement.

She makes an undignified groan as she attempts to sit up and become more alert. She’s shivering involuntarily; Togruta aren’t meant for the cold, and the air is frigid. At last her eyes fall on the cuffs around her wrists in the dim light, clamped too tight and already digging into flesh.

“Kriff,” she swears. She’s been captured. Dammit.

“Language, kid,” comes a hoarse voice, startling her, and she squints and realizes Rex is slumped against the opposite wall, also chained, looking weary but still with that teasing edge in his voice. “I’m glad you’re awake. Was getting worried.”

Ahsoka frowns and tries again to remember, grimacing as another ache pinches at her head. “What happened?”

“Seppies, sir,” Rex responds, and she can tell by his expression he doesn’t know their true identity. “I think. Not anyone I recognized. I saw some droids before I got knocked out, but no one’s come to check in on us.”

“How inconsiderate of them,” she scoffs, eliciting a slight grin from him. “A very rude way to treat a guest.”

“Honestly, I think…I think they’re waiting for you to be up, sir. Not sure why they need a clone like me for whatever intel they need.” He shrugs, like it’s matter-of-fact, and it annoys her because no matter how much she disagrees, the Republic will never view them as more than indispensable clones.

She sees his point, however. A Jedi would be a valuable bounty, or perhaps a hostage for negotiations. A clone captain didn’t pose much reward or threat, as much as she’s glad she isn’t alone in this. Her time captured by Hondo’s pirates was an uncomfortable memory, and the isolation and humiliation of it all still stung.

“Just Ahsoka, Rex,” she corrects. “We could be here for a long time, I’m tired of formalities.”

“Alright, sir, er, Ahsoka,” Rex stumbles out the words. It’s a bit comical. “Are you feeling alright?”

“My head hurts a bit,” she admits. “They must have knocked us out good. Other than that, fine. You?”

“Same,” he echoes. “Not sure where they put my helmet, though. Hope they don’t mess up the paint job.”

She’s opening her mouth to tease him over worrying about his outfit when the cell door creaks, shudders, and swings open. The light is blinding at first, and they both look away till their eyes adjust. A tall, narrowly-built, cloaked man stands in the doorframe flanked by two Magna guards. Their staffs make her cringe a bit; she knows too well the blow they pack.

The man, wearing a dark robe and glasses, looks more doctorly and science-related than a Sith Lord. No lightsaber, that’s for sure, and no major Force signature that Ahsoka can detect. So he isn’t a Force user; perhaps a lackey doing dirty work for Dooku or even a bounty hunter. Regardless, the place still reeks of darkness in the Force. It sets her on edge as his eyes roam over the room—at Rex, distastefully, and at her…curiosity and a glint of eagerness. She doesn’t like the look at all, and a growing sense of unease rises in her.

“A Jedi, at last,” the man growls, and Ahsoka’s skin crawls. “A lucky day this is. My masters will be most pleased.”

“Who do you work for?” She spits, shoving down the fear rising up in her. “Capturing a Jedi is foolish, you know they’ll be looking for us. You’re wasting your time.”

“Ah, but I’m not,” he answers, too calm. “By the time they arrive we will have everything we need from you.”

“I’m not telling you anything,” she retorts, and she sees Rex tense as the man moves towards her, essentially ignored by the guards as well.

“Oh, this isn’t an interrogation,” he hums. “We’ve been tasked with researching the biology of Jedi, you see, and beings with Force powers. To recreate them, possibly, or just understand them.”

Her body freezes up in dread. The doctor aura she detected earlier adds up now, and by the sounds of it they’re going to cut her open for research.

“Leave her alone!” Rex growls at them, still chained to the wall and glowering at them.

“Oh, we’ll bring your lovely Jedi back to you after. Not quite sure what state she’ll be in.” The man grins, nodding subtly to the MagnaGuards on either side. Before Ahsoka can react, one of them strikes her in the side—the pain is sudden and debilitating, and she cries out as her body goes numb. She can’t fight them back as they unchain her from the wall and drag her out the door, catching one last glance at her captain before the door slams shut.

 _Hurry up, Anakin,_ she practically shouts through their bond. Hopefully they’d find them before it was too late.

—

The next three hours are possibly the worst of Rex’s life.

That’s saying a lot, because he’s seen some things. War changes a man, even one bred for it, and lots of things still kept him up at night. Umbara, Zygerria, Fives’ death, just to name a few.

But the sound of his commander screaming herself hoarse sends waves of pain through him like nothing before.

Wherever they took her isn’t too far from the cell, or maybe the walls are just thin—but the screams are so obviously hers, increasing in pain as the time goes by, and he can’t know what they are doing to her exactly but it makes him furious. At first, he could hear her shouting at the man, arguing almost, putting on a brave face as he knew she would. She was strong and brave and would face down danger without a moment’s hesitation to protect her men. But even she couldn’t last forever—her shouts soon escalated into horrible, piercing shrieks, then ragged screams, and finally muted sobs. He wants nothing more than to bash the heads in of every Seppie here.

Kriff, he feels so _helpless._

And then, miraculously yet terrifying at the same time, there is silence.

His heart pounds, fear weighing crushingly heavy on his chest, willing to whatever was out there in the galaxy that she was alive. That they would let her live and bring her back, leave her alone.

As a soldier, he was bred to focus on the war and defend his brothers but not be attached to them. Rex knew he didn’t always do the best job of that; secretly, he considered Ahsoka one of his closest friends and his family. If he had to die here defending her, he was ready and willing. He hoped to kriff that General Skywalker would get here soon.

Rex tenses up as the door beeps and whirs, signaling someone approaching. The door slides open and his breath goes out of him like a shot.

The MagnaGuards haul Ahsoka in—Ahsoka, who is slumped and listless between them, each of her arms clamped in one of their harsh metal claws, covered in blood and sloppily applied bandages. Her face is already bruising, blood trickling from her nose and the corners of her mouth.

The droids deposit her on the floor mercilessly, dropping her to the concrete, then turning on their heels and closing the door behind them.

He’s still chained to the wall but by some miracle, has just enough slack to get to her. She’s alarmingly pale, probably from blood loss, and unmoving. He guesses by the cuts on her face and bruising knuckles that she put up a fight, as he knew she would.

Rex begins to realize most of her bandages are near veins—they’d taken blood, too much. Another deeper, bloodier wound in her leg makes him grimace. It’s so deep it’s almost…were they taking _bone marrow_? Without anesthetics?

The thought makes him nauseous, but he tries to focus on her. “Commander—Ahsoka,” he whispers gently. “Ahsoka.”

Her eyelids flutter weakly, a pained moan emitting from her throat. Rex eases her head onto his lap and touches her cheek gently—she flinches awake at the touch, relaxing minutely when her eyes fix on him. “It’s okay, Commander.”

“Rex…” she slurs, the words not coming out correctly. “H…hurts.”

“I know, sir, I know. We’re gonna get out of here soon, alright?” Rex doesn’t know if he’s saying it for his sake or hers.

“Mmmm,” she murmurs, another grimace of pain flickering across her pallid face.

“I need you to try and stay awake, okay? You lost a lot of blood and I need you to stay with me.”

“Took…blood. Bone…marrow,” she wheezes with great effort. Her voice is raw from the screaming. “Hurts.”

“I know, I know,” he assures, “you don’t have to talk. Just keep focused on me, okay?”

With great effort, she squints up at him. Rex forces a smile and hates how helpless he is right now to fix her—can’t get her to Kix, can’t break out of here with a lightsaber or the Force like one of the generals could. “Good. Keep looking at me, Commander.”

“Now,” he continues, trying to keep her distracted, “did I ever tell you about my first battle as a shiny?”

—

The pain is blinding, both during and after. The Separatists take more blood from her than she ever thought possible, harsh needles jabbed into her arms, her vision swimming as she sees the bottles of crimson lined up. They cut into her, drilling to bone, and this is when she cannot help the screams that tear their way out until her throat feels tattered. Never has she been subjected to agony quite like this, fully conscious.

Ahsoka blacks out several times; she loses complete track of time and the order of events. It’s just one massive blur of pain, her screams sounding farther and farther away. She thinks she is sobbing at some point, begging them to stop, begging her Master to arrive and save them already. For Rex.

_Anyone._

When it finally stops she is left limp and bloody on the table as they clean up, slapping a few crude bandages on her largest wounds. Ahsoka shrinks back from the contact, eyes pressed shut against the bright white lights, trying desperately to disassociate from the situation. To think of anything else. Good memories—but her mind is too weak to conjure any at the moment.

Then she’s being dragged back down the hallway, her cheek hitting the concrete of the cell from earlier. And Rex—Rex is there, and she can’t make out half of what he’s saying because she’s so dizzy and her body burns, but he speaks softly and she tries to trust that she is safe, that they won’t come back for her.

Even with her head on his lap, his thumb gently stroking her cheek to keep her grounded, she’s too weak to even speak with him about a possible escape plan. A clone, even a captain as skilled as Rex, has no chance of getting out of here alive without a Jedi, and Ahsoka would be of no help whatsoever. Her body feels so _heavy_. The phantom memory of needles jabbing her make her stomach clench with anxiety.

She finally realizes Rex is telling a story—trying to distract her, which she appreciates, because her entire body feels broken beyond repair and screams in pain any time she tries to move. She attempts to focus on him, snatching on to tiny details of the story like what planet it was on, who they were fighting. She can’t hold onto any detail for more than a few seconds before it vanishes.

Ahsoka closes her eyes and sends another desperate plea into the Force for Anakin to get here—before they kill her or Rex.

—

The night (he assumes it’s night, although it’s hard to tell since the cell is dim and musty) passes slowly, agonizingly slow. Rex has calculated approximately how long it’s been since they were captured, and he’s positive that General Skywalker and the 501st are out looking for them by now. Maybe even on their way to this forsaken hellhole of a compound. Ahsoka’s time is running out, and he knows it’s critical they get her to medbay the second rescue arrives. When, not if.

She’s shivering, now, but upon pressing his hand to her forehead he finds she’s burning up. A fever is not a good sign, and it’s not as if he has any blankets to give her to help break it. Instead she’s laying limply on the rough, damp concrete cell floor, without Kix or anyone useful, or even her Jedi master for comfort.

Rex feels ridiculously useless—he would do anything for her, without hesitation, as he knows she would for him, and it kills him to be able to do nothing right now than hold her head up and ramble on about Force knows what to distract her. The 501st has never had a Jedi like her or General Skywalker, who put themselves on the frontlines with the men day after day, treating them like equals and not just another clone. Ahsoka knew all of their names and spent a lot of time in the barracks with the men, even back on Coruscant when she could easily spend the whole time at the Temple. It wasn’t uncommon for her to spend the night there or stay into the early hours of the morning trading stories. The men would be devastated if they lost her, and Rex would never forgive himself.

It’s unfair, he reflects. Clones are bred for this, are accustomed to violence and well-adjusted to the fact that their sole purpose is to fight and die for the Republic, and that when they did die the Republic would just manufacture more of them. The Jedi have always been peacekeepers, he’s been told, for hundreds of years. They focused on meditating and peaceful defense missions across the galaxy and connecting with the Force, not fighting brutal campaigns in Separatist-occupied systems where slavery, death, torture and destruction were commonplace. It’s taking a toll on all of them, he can tell, especially Ahsoka.

A _commander_ at kriffing fourteen. She’s older now—it’s been several years since that day on Christophsis when she rolled into his life, snarky and bright and never failing to make him laugh—but she is still too young for this. He’s seen the way her eyes look haunted after a particularly ugly battle, how she doesn’t sleep for days after some campaigns and winds up in the barracks late at night for the comforting presence of her brothers. She’s seen things no one should have to, let alone a seventeen-year-old. She’s just been tortured nearly to death, unable to move and fading in and out of consciousness.

It’s things like these that make him really question the war.

He’s never wavered in his loyalty to the Republic—he will lead his brothers and defend his Jedi to his last breath. But the level of destruction the war has caused and the sometimes callous orders and attitude of the Jedi Council have led him to become somewhat cynical.

Ahsoka shifts in her feverish sleep-state, a pained moan emitting from her bloodstained mouth. Rex readjusts her in his grip, careful to support her head without letting the chains on his wrists bother her. She’s still shivering, ghostly pale, and he prays to every being that may be out there that he won’t have to watch his Commander and longtime friend die in his arms here in a dark cell on a faraway planet where no one will ever know what happened to them.

“Hang in there, ‘Soka,” he murmurs, his thumb stroking her cheek absently as if she can hear him. “They’ll be here soon.”

He’s not sure he believes it, but he has to act like he does, for her sake.

—

Ahsoka wakes with a start, unidentified terror gripping her, letting out a scream that sounds scratchy and hoarse to her. It’s dark and she can’t put much of a name to the feeling other than the Dark side of the Force, and pain—

 _The doctor,_ she remembers, and flinches at the memory of the needles, what if they come back for her?

“Ahsoka, it’s okay.” The voice is dry, like they haven’t had water in days, but warm and steady all the same. The pain ricochets through her body, her veins feeling like they are on fire, but she finally processes that it’s Rex and she is propped in his lap as he looks down at her worriedly.

“Rex,” she croaks. “Sorry.” Her vision swims like it’s been every time she’s awake, and she fights to stay conscious and take a breath.

“You’re not back in that room, ‘Soka,” he assures.

She’s about to ask his opinion on if he thinks they’ll actually make it out (and if she will die, because he’s really looking more worried than she’s ever seen) when something in the Force shifts and a lighter presence enters her mind.

“Anakin,” she whispers, voice breaking with relief. “He’s here. I sense him.” If she had any water in her system she probably would’ve cried.

_They made it. The doctors weren’t going to hurt her anymore._

Rex sighs, his face relaxing minutely. “I knew they’d come.”

It seems like eons before she hears a lightsaber slashing through the halls, no doubt cutting down the MagnaGuards and the Separatists. She can still feel the bruises around her arms from the guard’s metal grip.

The door is cut open and Ahsoka shrinks back on instinct, accustomed to only bad things coming through the entrance. But she’s flooded with Anakin’s warm presence across their bond, worried and comforting and angry all at the same time; she knows the anger isn’t directed at her.

“Kriff,” she hears him swear, then activate his comm. “We found them.”

She struggles to turn her head (her body feels so _heavy_ ) just as he rushes to her, paling as he takes her in. “Shit. Hey, Snips.” Ahsoka wants to sob.

“Master,” she chokes, the black spots dancing in her vision again. “Took you long enough.”

Anakin forces a laugh, but she can feel his fear through their bond. “Let’s get you out of here, okay?”

He cuts Rex free as a few troopers—Jesse and Fives, she thinks, spill into the cell, stopping to take the scene in as well. Anakin lifts her into his arms as carefully as he can, but she still hisses in pain at the movement. The wound in her leg is bleeding again, she registers absently, and cringes at the memory of the drill used on her. She’s shuddering uncontrollably, can’t stop even as they make their way out of the compound, Jesse walking closely to Rex to make sure he’s alright.

The halls are silent, the captors dead, and it’s eerie as they continue down the hallways. “You’re safe now, Snips,” Anakin whispers soothingly, his grip on her firm and grounding. She tries to focus on him through fluttering eyelids, breathing in the comforting smell of his robes so she could stop smelling her own blood and the damp scent of the compound. “We’re gonna get you back to the ship. We’re going home.”

“She’s lost a lot of blood, sir,” Rex informs him, thankfully not going into the details while she’s listening. The last thing she wants is to remember. “Way too much.”

“Home,” she murmurs, and she has just a few moments to wonder dizzily where her lightsabers are before her body seizes up and begins to shake violently.

“Skywalker to dropship, get in position! We’re about to reach the rendezvous point!” Anakin’s voice is reaching a panic she’s unfamiliar with.

The beckoning oblivion of unconsciousness overcomes her senses, too strong for her to fight against any more. Her vision blurs and fades, and she succumbs to the darkness—safe at last.


End file.
